College notebook: Former San Marin High basketball standout Wesonga working his way back from shoulder injury

Stuart Wesonga is back. In reality, however, the former San Marin High basketball standout never left. He insists his passion for the game burns brighter than ever, even if he hasn't played in a college game in almost a year now.

Between injury and indecision, Wesonga's collegiate career was put on hold after graduating from San Marin in 2011 as one of the top basketball prospects to emerge from Marin County in years.

"When we lost 52-49 to Bishop O'Dowd in the semifinals in 2011, he had — and many people told me this since then — the greatest game a Marin County player ever had," San Marin coach Craig Pitti said. "Stuart had 26 points, 25 rebounds and eight blocked shots."

The 6-foot-7 Wesonga, who led the Mustangs to the North Coast Section title in 2011, appeared on the fast track to Division I notoriety when he accepted a full ride offer from Cal State Northridge.

However, his Division I college career was derailed initially when — just before his freshman season was to begin — he decided Northridge was not the place for him.

Wesonga has nothing but nice things to say about Northridge. He simply had a change of heart.

"I was 18 years old, and maybe I wasn't ready to be away from home yet," Wesonga said. "I finished summer semester at Northridge and came home."

He never went back.

"The whole thing was totally a growing up thing," Wesonga said. "I was able to handle the dedication it took to study for classes and play basketball at Northridge, but I had a couple of things, some personal things, going on in my life at the time. I have no regrets about the way I left "... but maybe I could have gone about it in a different way."

Wesonga says if he could do it over, he would have done a better job of communicating with his coaches at Northridge when he decided to leave.

"I should have talked to the coaching staff," he said. "But I'm not ashamed of it. I realize now it was just a maturity thing."

In a spur of the moment decision to find a place to play basketball after opting out of attending Northridge, Wesonga enrolled at City College of San Francisco, one of the elite junior college programs in the state, and played well.

He said he had several games at City College where he scored more than 15 points.

"One game I only played 15 minutes and I led the team in scoring with 18," he said. "But the second half of the season, I wasn't playing much."

Wesonga's teammate at City College, Delon Wright — a 6-5 shooting guard from Leuzinger High in Los Angeles — said he was immediately impressed with Wesonga's basketball skills.

"Stuart was one of our best players last year," said Wright, who this season is averaging 17.8 points for the 15-0 Rams, who are the top-ranked team in the state. "I was really impressed with him. He blocks a lot of shots, gets a lot of rebounds and plays a really good vertical game."

Wright, who was roommates with Wesonga at CCSF, recently signed a letter of intent to play in the Pac-12 next season at the University of Utah.

"I can tell you one thing about Stuart — he eats a lot," Wright said with a laugh. "He could eat a big old bowl of pasta and still be hungry."

These days, maybe the only thing bigger than Wesonga's appetite for food, is his hunger to play basketball again. A bit frustrated by his lack of playing time at CCSF, Wesonga transferred to Santa Rosa JC last summer.

Just when he was ready to roll out his game again, he suffered a severe injury playing a pick-up game during the summer. Wesonga tore the labrum in his shoulder joint and was forced to undergo surgery to repair it.

At the time, of course, the injury was devastating. Wesonga was facing six months of recovery and rehab.

But with all that behind him now, Wesonga says the injury was actually a blessing in disguise.

"The injury actually helped me," said Wesonga, who pointed out he has full rotation of his right arm again and is experiencing no pain at all when he plays basketball.

Wesonga said he worked hard on his rehabilitation and actually started practicing basketball again — using only his left arm — before his injury was 100 percent healed.

In the past month or so, Wesonga said he has logged countless hours on the black top court near his mom's house in Novato.

"The injury opened my eyes to how much I really loved playing basketball," he said. "I stopped fighting it. Maybe people think I'm weird because I'm practicing basketball in my garage on a Friday night. But now I don't care."

Wesonga considered playing at SRJC this season, despite just coming back from injury. Ultimately, however, he decided it was in his best interest to save his year of college athletic eligibility and opted to take a medical redshirt season instead.

Wesonga said there's no doubt he absolutely will be playing basketball next year. And he's "100 percent positive" he's good enough to play D-I collegiate ball.

"I hope the D-I schools would recognize the importance of me having three years of eligibility left," Wesonga said.

This time around, however, Wesonga said he is spending extra time doing his homework in order to find a D-I program best suited to his needs.

Wesonga said his back-up plan is to play at SRJC, where he is already taking classes, next season if he doesn't receive the offer he's looking for from a D-I school.

"I think I am going at basketball now with a totally different mindset," he said. 'When I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it in the right way. I understand the game a lot more now than I did when I was coming out of high school. I understand why you need to do certain things on the court instead of just doing certain things. My basketball IQ has definitely gone up."

Around campus

 Emily Easom, a 5-10 guard who played at Marin Catholic last season, is a true freshman on the roster for the Portland State women's basketball team. Easom, last year's Marin IJ Player of the year when she averaged 15.5 points per game, is seeing only limited action so far, but did have a seven-point game against Corban University earlier this season.

 Dylan Morris, a 2012 graduate of Redwood, is on the Stanford wrestling team roster as a true freshman. Morris, wrestling at the 174-pound weight class, is 0-2 so far this season in limited action. The former Redwood team captain finished seventh at the state meet last year.